Letter from Phil...

this is a sort of use your brain issue

Though I'd hate to be an accountant, or other boring pen pusher, they do know how to get things done.

They've usually got analytical minds, they sit down at a desk and plod away at something until they finish it. They get results.

And like it or not that's what you've got to do with your online business.

The web can be a massive distraction, but you've got to cast all that aside. When you're in working mode you've got to ignore everything that's not going to advance your business.

Let me put this another way.

Plan what you're going to do before you sit down at your computer.

Then do it.

I'm as guilty as everyone else. Yesterday I spent half a day online and at the end found I'd achieved precisely nothing. I'd looked up expired domain names, tossed around new domain name ideas even though I've already got 15, or so, names I haven't built a site for yet. I read forum posts without contributing anything. I read newspaper articles, looked up email addresses of old school friends, checked the local weather even though I could look out of the window and see it was as sunny as usual. Late last night, feeling guilty at my earlier lack of achievement I sat down and answered a pile of urgent emails. But really I should have done that earlier instead of time-wasting.

You're probably just as guilty of time-wasting as me.

“The first law of success is concentration - to bend all the energies
to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the
right or to the left.” -William Mathews.

So here's how to get things done.

You've got to think! Use your brain. Get a pen and a piece of paper and make a To-do list of what you need to do that day. I know this has been said many times before...but that's because
To-do lists really do work.

Then when you sit at your computer plod through your list, ticking each item off as you achieve it.

If you want to look up the weather, search for expired domain names, set aside a period of time to do that AFTER you've achieved some or all of the items on your To-do list.

So that's how to get things done on a day to day basis.

But that doesn't help long term success planning. Basically that old cliché holds true - you won't get anywhere if you don't know where you're going.

You need to plan for success. You need to know what you want to achieve, and you need to work out, in a step-by-step manner, just how to grow your business.

You've got to be organized. You don't just become successful you've got to make it happen.

And the only certain way to do this is by planning your success step-by-step.

Become more organized. Write down a very brief business plan, work out an action diary - what you're going to do at what time. And build yourself a marketing calendar so that you know what you should be doing this month, next month, and so on.

This time don't just sit down with a pen and piece of paper, sit down with a whole notebook and spend an hour or so planning growth steps for your online business.

Here's how I get things done.

1. I get a notebook and a pen, and sit on the deck with a strong black coffee or a glass of wine. I make notes for my newsletter, plan web sites I'm working on. Make notes about business direction, goals, and plans. I decide what I need to do online then I go and do it.

or

2. I skip the notebook and pen stage, sit on the deck with a strong black coffee or a glass of wine, and think for a while. Then I turn on my Gateway Solo notebook computer and work on web design or writing.

Then, and only then, comes step 3, which is to sit back down at my Dell desktop and put things together.

There's no business like no business

If you want to run an online business you've got to run an online business.

Pause for effect and repeat again....just like the better public speakers and charismatic preachers do.

If you want to run an online business....

Look, let's face it. Business is the word we should be concentrating on here. It's a business, and until you treat it like one you won't succeed. You've got to run an online business like any other business.

You simply can't play at it. If you want to achieve even moderate part-time success with a web business of your own, you have to approach it with:

* goals
* planning
* drive
* ambition
* dedication
* purpose
* direction
* hard work

and a lot more besides.

Setting goals, and planning how you are going to reach them is the one step you have to make. You are very unlikely to achieve success without knowing what you want and the exact route you are going to take to get there.

You need goals and plans to achieve those goals.

But goals and planning aren't enough. If you're working part-time from home you will find online success very hard to come by without the encouragement and help of your family. When I first started my online business my wife would complain that all I wanted to do was "play around on the computer" rather than sit and watch a movie with her. It was only when I began making a worthwhile online income - often making more in a week than she did as a head school - that she realized I was "working" at a part-time job. Or in my words "building a business." You also need to spend a lot of time on your computer, and on the net: working at developing your web sites or newsletter, at networking and schmoozing, at grabbing all the free publicity you can, at developing products or finding the right existing products (affiliate programs or resale rights) to sell from your site.

And above all you have to learn discipline. You have to learn to avoid time wasting and surfing around when you're supposed to be working. It's so very important to be organized online. Otherwise you tend to drift and not get essential work done.

Make a daily and weekly online to-do list and use it.

You've also got to stop wasting time:

Did you know that during an average length lifetime most people spend 23 years sleeping, 19 years at work, enjoy 9 years of leisure, spend 7 years traveling (mostly to work ), take 6 years to cook and eat meals, 3 years being ill, 2 years in the bathroom/shower, and 1 year at Church.

Makes you wonder how we find time for building a web business,doesn't it?

Especially when you factor in the information that adult men spend 21.9 hours a week watching TV, and adult women 26.5 hours. Mind you the TV viewing figures are from a 1996 survey, so those figures have probably dropped because of the time spent surfing the net.

So what do we do about this time problem?

According to Douglas Adams, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

And if it's only an illusion we can create more of it. So how do we create extra hours for building our online business?

Well, apart from the obvious of cutting down on watching TV, there is one very simple way of gaining time.

And that's by getting up early.

Dragging yourself out of bed is an extremely simple way of creating more time, but is extremely effective. If you get up one hour early for a year, you have effectively created around 10 additional working weeks. And when you work at home on your own business then this work directly profits you.

The trick is to get into the routine of getting up at a specific time. For a year I got up at 4 every morning to write a novel ( unpublished ). The first few days of dragging myself out of bed before dawn were painful, but it quickly got easier. Until after a week or so, it just became normal and routine.

You'll find that it gets easier as the days go by, and although you'll be tired for a few weeks, your body will adjust.

Lost time is never found again - John H. Aughey

Nanosecond [n] The shortest possible measure of time, discovered recently in New York city. Generally speaking, it is the time between when the traffic light turns green and the guy behind you honks his horn - Anonymous